Category Archives: Switzerland

Autumn heat continues in Europe after record-breaking September

Posted on by

Countries including France, Germany and Poland all had their hottest Septembers on record

Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and Switzerland have all experienced their hottest Septembers on record, with unseasonably high temperatures set to continue into October, in a year likely to be the warmest in human history.

As 31C (88F) was forecast in south-west France on Sunday and 28C in Paris, the French weather authority, Météo-France, said September’s average temperature was 21.5C, between 3.5C and 3.6C above the norm for the 1991-2020 reference period.

Continue reading...

Former Algerian minister of defence indicted in Switzerland on war crime charges

Posted on by

Khaled Nezzar is to be tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity during 1991-2002 Algerian civil war

Victims of the 1991-2002 Algerian civil war have been given hope that they will finally receive justice after the highly unusual announcement by Swiss authorities that a former Algerian minister of defence is to stand trial in Switzerland on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Khaled Nezzar is set to be the highest-ranking military official ever tried for war crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows states to investigate and prosecute people suspected of having committed international crimes regardless of where they were committed, their nationality, or the nationality of the victims.

Continue reading...

Two-thirds of Britons support legalising assisted dying, poll shows

Posted on by

Exclusive: MPs looking at how to respond to calls for UK to allow terminally ill, mentally competent adults to end their lives

More people believe it is acceptable to break the law to help a friend or loved who wants to die than believe it is wrong, a snapshot of UK public opinion on assisted dying has revealed.

The finding comes as MPs weigh possible changes to laws governing end-of-life decisions and as a terminally ill Lancashire woman who is preparing to travel to Switzerland to end her life has described the UK law against assisted dying as “cruel and anachronistic”.

Continue reading...

Zero-degree line at record height above Switzerland as heat and fire hit Europe

Posted on by

Weather ballon climbs to 5,300 metres before temperature falls to 0C amid late summer heatwave

A Swiss weather balloon had to climb to an unprecedented 5,300 metres (17,400ft) before the temperature fell to 0C (32F), meteorologists have said, as a late summer heatwave and wildfires continue to pummel swathes of continental Europe.

A man was found dead in a blaze raging north of Athens on Monday as the Greek government warned of an “extreme” risk of fire across the country, while more than half of mainland France was placed under an amber heat alert.

Continue reading...

Three convicted after Met police sting operation recovers £2m Ming vase

Posted on by

Detective from force’s specialist crime unit says cross-border operation was the result of four years’ work

Three men have been convicted after a £2m vase stolen from a museum was recovered in a police sting operation.

The Chinese Ming dynasty vase was stolen from the Museum of Far Eastern Art in Geneva, in Switzerland in June 2019. Three men plotted to sell it on for hundreds of thousands of pounds, but were caught in a Scotland Yard operation.

Continue reading...

Gotthard rail tunnel, world’s longest, closes for months after Swiss derailment

Posted on by

Sixteen freight carriages run off rails, tearing up eight kilometres of train track and leaving engineering marvel inaugurated in 2016 unable to take passengers

Train passengers between north and southernmost Switzerland will have to skip the world’s longest train tunnel and go back to the longer scenic route for months, rail authorities have said, after a freight service derailed and tore up the track.

Sixteen cars that jumped the tracks in last Thursday’s derailment remained stuck inside the 57km (35-mile) long Gotthard base tunnel in the southern Ticino region, national railway operator SBB said on Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Nile Rodgers asks populist Swiss party to stop using We Are Family ‘soundalike’

Posted on by

Co-author of Sister Sledge song ‘about inclusion and diversity’ condemns move by rightwing SVP

The songwriter and musician Nile Rodgers has asked Switzerland’s rightwing populist Swiss People’s party (SVP) to cease and desist from using a “soundalike” version of Sister Sledge’s hit We Are Family in its election campaigns.

Ahead of Swiss parliamentary elections in October, the Eurosceptic and anti-immigration SVP on Monday released Das Isch d’SVP (That’s the SVP), a song whose chorus directly echoes that of the 1979 Sister Sledge hit composed by Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.

Continue reading...

Border terrier makes incredible journey 100 miles across Switzerland

Posted on by

Lucky was left in kennels in Bern but escaped and made her way to Lake Geneva before being found and traced to owners

An escaped border terrier named Lucky made an epic 100-mile journey across Switzerland on the eve of the country’s national holiday, according to local media reports.

Her owners had left her in kennels in the region of Bern, but the 14-year-old dog broke out on Monday evening. The following morning she turned up in Geneva 160 kilometres (100 miles) away, the RTS public broadcaster reported.

Continue reading...

Body of hiker missing since 1986 found near Matterhorn

Posted on by

Police confirm remains discovered on melting glacier in Swiss mountains are those of German climber

The remains of a German mountain climber who disappeared while crossing a glacier near the Matterhorn mountain nearly 40 years ago have been discovered in melting ice.

Two climbers found the remains on 12 July while hiking along the Theodul Glacier in Zermatt, Valais, southern Switzerland, police said on Thursday.

Continue reading...

Lightning strikes twice as rescuers of Swiss victims are also hit

Posted on by

Police officer and helicopter pilot struck on the way to help victims of earlier blast in Fribourg canton of Switzerland

Lightning never strikes twice, until it does: a police officer and helicopter pilot rushing to help two people injured in a lightning strike on Friday were themselves also hit, Swiss authorities said.

A 51-year-old man and 16-year-old boy were struck by lightning around 8.30am while working in a field in Ménières, in the western canton of Fribourg, regional police said in a statement.

Continue reading...

Tourists helicoptered out of Swiss ski resort after cable car breaks down

Posted on by

Chairlift was also part of rescue operation to evacuate almost 300 people from ski station at 3,000 metres

Helicopters have been used to evacuate nearly 300 people from a high-mountain station in the Swiss Alps after a cable car to the top broke down.

A technical problem was detected on Thursday morning involving a cable car up to the popular Glacier 3000 ski resort in Les Diablerets mountain massif in south-western Switzerland, the station chief said.

Continue reading...

Huge landslide misses Swiss mountain village of Brienz ‘by a hair’

Posted on by

Rockfall buries access road but stops just in front of hamlet, which had been evacuated in anticipation

A large rockfall has narrowly missed a Swiss mountain village whose inhabitants were evacuated last month over fears of a landslide.

The bulk of the rock, which geologists had warned was in danger of falling directly onto the village of Brienz, crashed to the ground on Thursday night, authorities in the Albula community in the canton of Graubünden said on Twitter.

Continue reading...

Three Dutch mountaineers found dead in Swiss Alps

Posted on by

Swiss authorities have launched an investigation into the deaths and said they cannot rule out that the three died in an avalanche

Three Dutch mountaineers who had been missing for days have been found dead in the Swiss Alps, and police suggested they may have been victims of an avalanche.

Two men aged 32 and 40 and a 30-year-old woman had been hiking in the southern Swiss canton of Valais when they disappeared, regional police said on Monday.

Continue reading...

Three dead in tourist plane crash in Switzerland

Posted on by

Pilot and two passengers died at scene of accident in steep and forested area in west of country

A tourist plane crashed in a wooded, mountainous area of western Switzerland on Saturday, killing the three people onboard, police said.

The small tourist plane crashed in a steep and forested area near Ponts-De-Martel in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel at about 10.20am (0820 GMT), regional police said.

Continue reading...

Kemi Badenoch flying to Switzerland to discuss post-Brexit trade deal

Posted on by

Business and trade secretary to meet Swiss counterpart on Monday to boost trade between two ‘services superpowers’

Kemi Badenoch will fly to Switzerland on Monday for talks with her Swiss counterpart on a new post-Brexit trade deal, describing the two countries as “natural trading partners”.

The business and trade secretary is meeting Guy Parmelin in Berne to discuss a “modern” UK-Switzerland free trade agreement (FTA) that would boost trade between two “services superpowers”, she said.

Continue reading...

Credit Suisse says £55bn left bank in lead-up to rescue by UBS

Posted on by

Results reported for what is likely to be the last time as lender’s takeover by Swiss rival nears completion

Credit Suisse said customers pulled more than 61bn Swiss francs (£55bn) worth of assets from the bank at the start of the year, laying bare the scale of the panic that contributed to its failure and emergency takeover by its rival UBS last month.

The Swiss lender said the “significant withdrawals” were partly to blame for its poor financial performance in the first quarter, with its adjusted pre-tax loss ballooning to 1.3bn Swiss francs for the first three months of the year. That compares with a profit of 300m Swiss francs during the same period in 2022.

Continue reading...

Credit Suisse investors suing Swiss regulator after £4bn bond wipeout

Posted on by

Finma accused of acting unlawfully and undermining confidence in Switzerland as a financial centre

A group of Credit Suisse investors who lost bonds worth more than CHF 4.5bn (£4bn) are suing Switzerland’s financial regulator over a decision to wipe out risky bank debt after an emergency merger with UBS last month.

The investors filed their claim at a court in St Gallen, in the north-east of Switzerland, weeks after Swiss authorities orchestrated the takeover of Credit Suisse by its larger rival UBS, to try to stem a crisis of confidence in the global banking sector.

Continue reading...

Furious Credit Suisse investors say bank’s board should be ‘put behind bars’

Posted on by

Shareholders lash out during final AGM as boss apologises for crisis that led to takeover of lender by UBS

Furious Credit Suisse investors at its final ever annual meeting blocked executive pay plans and called for board members to be “put behind bars”, as the Swiss lender’s chair said he was “truly sorry” over the bank’s demise.

Shareholders used most of the nearly five-hour annual general meeting in Zurich – the last in the 167-year-old bank’s history – to voice fury over poor management, hitting out at excessive pay for “incompetent and greedy” bankers who they said took too many risks and endangered Switzerland’s economic prosperity.

Continue reading...

Switzerland’s attorney general to investigate Credit Suisse takeover

Posted on by

Inquiry to focus on whether emergency state-backed UBS takeover breached criminal law

Switzerland’s federal prosecutor has launched an investigation into whether last month’s state-backed takeover of the stricken bank Credit Suisse by its bigger rival UBS broke Swiss criminal law.

The office of the attorney general said it was looking into potential breaches by government officials, regulators and executives at the two banks who thrashed out an emergency merger over a frantic weekend in mid-March to prevent a wider financial meltdown.

Continue reading...